Roleplaying Game

Reinforcements arrive

The car trip to the alley Cian had told them about was a little longer than usual, a roadblock having been set up and the closed-off street full of vehicles with flashing lights and police. Melody strained to see what the commotion was and it looked like there were screens raised in the middle of the pavement outside a bar or club or something. As she settled back into her seat she saw Jazz sniffing at the open window of the car, the witch's face crinkled in concentration.

Her eyes narrowed and her foot pressed a little harder on the accelerator once they were clear of the traffic around the scene. "That must be the market he was talking about," Mel said, pointing at the E-Zmart's lights, "and there's the alley." She was almost out of the vehicle by the time Jazz parked, the older witch puzzled by the young woman's keenness to get to the alley.

Mel had the backpack on her shoulder as she stepped off the kerb and looked down into the dark alley, eyes taking a moment to adjust after the lights of the market.

"Daniel? Are you here?" she called out, one hand on the corner of the wall, head tilted to one side as she took a step past the phone box.

Daniel didn’t mean to give such a hesitant response, but he wasn’t sure how long the statement would hold true. Not long after he hung up with Melody, the portal had produced a visitor to their plane and Daniel had spent the intervening minutes in a precarious position… under the razor-sharp edge of a tusk pointed right at his neck.

The creature had bounded into the world with the eagerness of a linebacker rushing the field. It towered over Daniel at a good eight feet to his six, six-hundred pounds to his less than two-hundred. Its body was muscle and sinew and armored bone. It saw him and growled, then charged, and Daniel – armed with naught but fangs and a tire iron – fought back by raising his weapon and wailing on the beast. He hit it and hit it and hit it again, each impact echoing in the alley, a sickening thud. But even when he employed the full force of his vampire strength, he managed nothing more than to stun the thing. “This… is not working!” He dropped the iron and ran for the phone booth and his butcher knife. Daniel whirled around just in time to get bowled over by the demon. Fortunately, he had the wherewithal to brace the hilt of the knife against himself, blade outward. The demon impaled itself. Down they went with all that momentum, Daniel on his back and the beast on top.

Now he was trapped under all that weight with a strangely jagged exoskeletal bone poised to behead him.

"Daniel!" Melody's eyes had adjusted, drawn down to where Daniel's face was, blurred and half obscured by the tusk and shadow cast by the huge body on top of him. Just then the head lifted slightly, the tusk lowering until it was a hair's breadth from Daniel's throat as a groan echoed around the alley.

Before she even had time to think, Melody reacted, her arm stretched out, fingers splayed and palm directed to the carcass as she appeared to brace herself, her head lowering a little as she focused completely on the demon's body. It started to lift, slowly, and as the head rolled again, the tusk certain to have sliced through anything beneath it, the creature was levitated upwards, jerkily at first, but more rapidly as Melody came closer until it was clear of Daniel's body.

The vampire winced as the tusk brushed his throat, just close enough to elicit a thin line of blood. “Mel—!” He strained away from it but then the weight was miraculously up and lifting away. He didn’t need to breathe but even a vampire could appreciate the freedom to do it. Daniel didn’t waste any time rolling out of the way and jumping to his feet.

The knife handle was still sticking out of the levitating beast. He reached up, pulled it out of the hide, and stabbed again, this time into the thickly veined neck. Hot blood streamed down his forearm and onto the ground, wetting the pavement like a slaughterhouse floor. “Sorry guy.”

Daniel stepped back and tried to shake the blood off his arm. He seriously contemplated licking it, but that would’ve been weird in mixed company and it didn’t smell like anything he wanted to ingest.

The older witch's voice echoed around the alley and Mel jumped, her concentration broken and the body dropping instantly to the ground. She spun around and stammered a little.

"I.. he.. Daniel, he was trapped, the tusk was going to go through his throat," she finally managed to get out, straightening a little and lifting her chin as her eyes met the other witch's.

Jazz looked from Melody across to the vampire. She looked him up and down, eyes narrowing as she studied him for a moment. "Guess for you that might've been fatal," she commented, then looked back at Melody. "Clearly you've been practicing, and just as well," she stated, nodding once at her apprentice before looking down at the carcass now sprawled on the ground.

"Is this all that's come through?" she asked Daniel, proceeding to pull some of the small bags from the large one she had slung across her chest.

“Tonight, yeah, but they said— mmp!” Daniel had heard the faint lisp of a vampire speaking around its fangs and morphed back into human visage. Golden eyes turned to blue. “They said something came out the other day, some kind of face-ripping ghost thing. So either the world on the other side of there is a real freak show,” he gestured at the hole in the wall, “Or that thing is on a rotation.”

Melody had set down the heavy bag she had on her shoulder as her mentor spoke to Daniel, a little surprised to see how little notice the older woman took of Daniel's morphing from vampire to human. She was about to go and get him something to wipe his hand on when Jazz stepped forward, studying his hand for a moment, then pulled out a cloth from her own bag, and gestured for him to come closer, taking his hand and laying the cloth over it before he had a chance to pull away.

The cloth dissolved, Jazz's frown deepening as she studied the results, sniffing at the wisps of vapourised cloth as they rose up.

"Hmm, not good, but not very conclusive," she muttered, loud enough for both to hear, but already digging around in her bag as she crossed over to where the body lay.

Melody looked at Daniel's hand and then up at his now-human face. "Are you alright?" she asked, knowing that Jazz would be absorbed with whatever she was on the trail of for a few minutes.

“Uhhh.” Daniel looked from his hand to the elder witch and back again, a look of pure puzzlement on his features. “Sure. I don’t know what just happened.” He turned the hand to make sure it was normal on both sides. It felt normal. Had that magic trick been about him or the beast that shed the blood? Daniel had a feeling he could be described as not good but inconclusive, too.

He touched the minor cut on his throat. It stung like being cut shaving.

“I didn’t know you could do that. I thought you said it was mostly potions.” Now he was looking at Melody for information. The vampire had next to zero knowledge of magic outside of pop culture and vague historical references.

Melody ducked her head a little, toeing a crack in the paving before answering. "That's my main thing at the store, I like to create them, and perfect them, but Jazz has been on my case about practicing other things," she said, glancing across to where the woman was crouching down next to the body. She looked back at Daniel and lifted a shoulder in a semi-shrug as her hands rubbed up and down her arms which were folded across her body, a shiver running through her as she realised the size of the carcass she had lifted.

"I've been practicing that, because I can use it to get things down off the top shelves and stuff, but I've never done anything like that before," she admitted, having surprised herself at what she'd been able to do, especially now she had had a chance to look. She looked at the cut on his throat. "Uh, do you need something for that? And do you bleed? Or heal?"

“It’s fine,” he said, brushing it off. No pulse meant not much in the way of blood flow and he would heal before it did any damage. “I was just thinking I’d either be a pile of dust or a hood ornament if you hadn’t shown up at exactly that second. Thanks.” He reached out and awkwardly clapped Melody on the shoulder blade. Her slight weight meant he likely jolted her a bit.

“Oh.” Daniel remembered the walky-talky and he went to collect it. Keying it up, he said, “This is Daniel. A giant demon with tusks came for a visit… Now dead thanks to some teamwork and the good people at Solomon’s Scrolls. We’re good.”

"A vampire slayer?" Melody said, only just managing to stop herself from squeaking a little. She saw Jazz's head turn, paying attention to Daniel as she slowly straightened, a little slower than a younger person might do, but still quite agile. It sometimes surprised Melody how easily Jazz moved, knowing what she did about some of the things the older woman had been through in her life there in Las Vegas, and her travels that were brought about by her 'skill'.

"Rhiannon, did you say?" the older witch said, eyeing Daniel for a long moment. "And this vampire slayer, she knows you're here?" There was no doubting the interest in Jazz's question, her face giving nothing away as to the reason for her interest.

“Yeah. She said normally she’d stake me but they needed to keep eyes on this thing. Mutual interest.”

Daniel looked over at the witch, as casually as he could manage and keeping his body loose, wondering if she was about to make a point about himself or the slayer. Thus far he wasn’t getting particularly friendly vibes off the woman. Did he need to watch his ass around her?

After giving him a long intense look as if assessing his potential for living up to the Slayer's belief in him, Jazz sniffed her acceptance of what she saw and turned back to the body in front of her.

Melody recognised the look, something she'd seen her mentor use on some customers, and she always believed it was almost as if Jazz was checking for a person's aura, or some sign of dishonesty, because the sniff of acceptance was not always given, and some had been sent scowling from her store with a barely discernible motion of her hand instead.

"So how did you know about the portal?" Melody asked, watching Jazz straighten from where she'd been crouched and head toward the blacker than black opening in the wall down the alley.

“I got a note at work. At Ragnarok,” he clarified. He crossed his arms and watched the older woman, too. “I met this guy Cian out in the desert one night. We both showed up at a meteor site. Anyway, I guess he decided I can play well with others so it didn’t hurt to ask. You?”

"Cian? He's the one who came into the store, told us about it and left the information for Jazz," Melody told him, looking across at the woman stopped and turned, not at the mention of the name, but at the comment regarding a meteor. She started back toward the pair as Melody looked at Daniel.

"He's been in a few times. Once he bought some crystals, for someone he said, to help them. A beautiful piece of cats eye on a gold chain. And he had us make some make some other things for him." She stopped talking, realising that perhaps she shouldn't be telling anyone else these things about a customer.

He gestured over his shoulder at the past. “A couple months ago out near Searchlight.” Daniel didn’t go into the details because admitting they saw an alien would lead to more questions, like was there just the one alien? And where did it go? And did anyone ever track it down? And did they report it? All things he didn’t know, probably because he was irresponsible and soulless, and that was before he was turned into a vampire.

“You know that guy’s a w—uhh…” He caught himself before outing the guy and rubbed his nose dismissively. “Wanker, right?”

Jazz's eyes narrowed as she looked at Daniel, waiting for him to say 'Were', and she snorted inelegantly at the vampire's attempt at covering himself.

"He's as much a wanker as you are breathing," she told him dismissively, rolling her eyes. "Was there anyone else there? From Searchlight?" she asked intently. There was no mistaking the mention of Searchlight had intensified her questions.

Daniel looked between Melody and her mentor. He could be a decent guy when he chose the high road, but he was still a vampire and the witch’s bristly nature wasn’t sitting right with him. She had cajoled Melody for saving his neck, done magic on his hand, and begun interrogating him about a months-old incident. He couldn’t figure out who it reminded him more of: Mrs. Holcomb, a former private school teacher who’d given him a D in English, or his grandmother, who’d given him a D at life.

“Maybe we should focus on that.” He nodded at the portal. “In case it spews anything else while we’re standing here. You ever seen anything like it?”

"I'll decide what I'll focus on. The events in Searchlight could have something to do with that," she told him, not even looking over her shoulder but gesturing toward the black opening with a tilt of her head. "Any incident in or around a nexus can mean we're all in for a stride of strife."

At the mention of a 'nexus' Melody's eyes widened and she stared at Jazz. "A nexus? Searchlight? Is that the one you've told me about, but never told me the name?" the young witch asked, her mouth falling open a little as the older witch's head nodded. "You mean all those things that happened back then, that you have taught me, they happened just down the road in Searchlight? I thought it must have been, I don't know, near the Great Lakes, or something!" she exclaimed more than a little shocked and surprised.

When she had started her apprenticeship Jazz used to have her read old articles, news stories about events that had the names of the place and people blacked out. Jazz had told her that was to stop her being distracted by things that didn't matter, and to just concentrate on the descriptions. "These are all signs of events that you must be on the lookout for," she'd heard every time she'd questioned the old woman. "Doesn't matter where they happened, just that they are signs."

And now the signs were starting to pop up again. Except this one wasn't amongst the ones she'd learnt about back then.

Jazz sighed, her lips tightening a little as she looked down at the blackness. "This isn't like anything that happened back then," she said, making her way down towards the opening again, gesturing for them to follow. When she was near the portal she pointed to the wall.

"See the paint?" she pointed out, indicating the outer edge of the portal. "It's been opened from this side, by someone, and they've done it on purpose. I've never seen anything like this before. Portals I've seen have been... " She paused, as if searching for a way to describe the difference. ".. they've been like a tear, a slash in the fabric of our world, and forced from the other side." Still looking at the opening, eyes tracing the edges again she indicated it with a slight lift of her chin. "This has been opened from this side, by someone, or something, on purpose. The easiest way to close it will be to find whoever did this and have them close it!" she finished, her tone almost a little frustrated.

Daniel stood with his feet shoulder-width apart and arms crossed. His ire was up. The woman rankled at him; she was abrupt and disdainful, either of him or the world at large, he didn’t know, but he’d had too many people be dismissive or condescending to him. Deanna, his family, his teachers... He knew that if he engaged any further in the conversation he’d say something off-color – possibly even vamp out – and that wasn’t an idea he cherished in the company of two witches, one of whom had an unknown extent of power.Still, his eyes honed in on a vein in her neck. He wasn’t even thinking of biting it; just slashing it with his knife and letting the spray hit his face.

Daniel turned away from the image and paced towards the pay phone.

Don’t… do not…

His fangs strained at his gums. He shut his eyes and began to internally hum a Ramones song.

Mel had followed Jazz down the alley, closer to the portal, and looked where the older witch pointed, seeing the outline sprayed onto the wall. Following Jazz's lead she sniffed at the air, her nose wrinkling at the mix of odours that came to her, but the strongest in that moment being "... mothballs? I wasn't expecting that."

"And that's what I keep telling you. Expect the unexpected. As cliche as it sounds, it's still going to be one of your best weapons against the unknown." Jazz reached into her bag and when her hand withdrew it carried a crystal. She held it in the palm of her hand, out flat, and murmured an incantation, before curling her fingers around it and flicking her wrist, sending it spinning into the blackness.

Daniel rolled his shoulders and tried to pop his neck. It wasn’t like him to get this ruffled. He wondered if it had something to do with the blood on his arm and in the air, the portal with its weird humming energy, or the two witches. His temper felt closer to the surface, like a pot boiling almost over. He turned his profile so that he could see Melody and Jazz out of the corner of his eye.

Just keep singing. He began to whistle the melody to Danny Says. The song was doing its job, so he felt safer chancing looks at them.

The chunk of mineral flew back into their world and struck the older woman near her ear. It was a small, stinging slap, not bad enough to bruise, but man, that had to smart. His laughter was a sharp bark, more surprise than real humor, the vampire’s eyes wide and glistening.

That it came back at all was a surprise, the clip to her ear annoying. She'd just told Melody to expect the unexpected, and not heeded her own words. The look she gave the vampire was enough to wither a grown man, and had done so on more than a few occasions, but usually with a few words added to aid the process. Instead her attention turned to the projectile.

After retrieving the crystal she studied it, and shook her head. "There's something different about this portal," she said, sniffing at the air that rushed out for a moment, her forehead wrinkling with a frown. "Smell," she said, the single word almost sounding like an order, but Melody simply taking it as instruction, and doing as the old woman said.

"It's different now," Jazz murmured, "but with that same singular note."

Much of what she had learnt had had some sort of musical reference, and Mel often heard music playing in the background at Jazz's home when she called.

"Same tune, different soloist," she heard the older witch add as she came across to where Mel stood and gestured for the backpack Mel was still carrying. Slipping it off her shoulder reminded Mel just how heavy it was, and the clunk as it landed on the ground confirmed there was at least a few weapons inside.

A few moments later and Jazz pushed two items, two carved stones into Mel's hands, instructing the young witch to place them at the opening of the alley, which Mel proceeded to do. She glanced over her shoulder and saw her mentor go further into the alley, past the portal, and place two more carved stones on the ground. Mel followed suit, giving Daniel a quick glance and smile, almost apologetic, as she did. "She's 'working'," she whispered, as if trying to explain her mentor's demeanour. "And this nexus thing? Down at Searchlight? If it's what she taught me about?" Mel hesitated, looking down at Jazz then back at Daniel. "It didn't go too well for a lot of people last time."

He bit the corner of his mouth. “Ahhh….” The singular cringing note indicated that he knew something and had only just picked up on it. He exhaled long and slow. It was the posture of a kid who was about to confess a curfew violation. Daniel reached back to fiddle with the tag in his collar and said, “Last year I met a vampire. Katherine or Kathleen, I think. A psychic had sent her to Searchlight; she said it was the site of the coming apocalypse because of some kind of magnetism. A couple months later, I met this guy named Whistler, a half-demon. He backed up her claim. He was trying to steer people out of town.”

It struck Daniel as odd that these super-powered pieces of information kept landing in his lap, juicy tidbits other people would claw and scratch for, and he just shrugged and cracked open another beer. Went about his business.

Mel glanced down the alley, knowing her mentor's hearing was extremely good, deceptively so for someone of her age. And as if on cue Jazz appeared beside them, eyes on Daniel. "Whistler, hmm?" was all she said, before looking at the vampire and holding out two more of the carved stones.

"I need those to go up there," she said, indicating the tops of the walls on either side of the alley. "Over the portal."

Mel was about to take them when Jazz indicated Daniel. "Would you mind?" she asked, eyes meeting the vampire's as she held the two stones in her hands.

He raised his eyebrows in surprise, hand going still at the base of his neck. “Nah, I don’t mind.” Daniel took the round rocks from her and looked up. The EZ-Mart wasn’t a particularly tall building, just a one-story. The vampire’s pockets weren’t big enough for the spheres, so he stuck them inside the hem of his t-shirt and tucked it into his waistband. Daniel wiped his hands and jumped. He had enough demon physicality to grab the ledge of the roof, flex his arms and pull himself up.

Once on the roof, he walked along the edge until he was above the mystical doorway. “Right about here?”

He knelt and placed the spheres a meter apart. They were heavy. He didn’t think they’d roll away.

"I could have done that," Melody whispered to the older witch, eyes on Daniel, silhouetted against the backlight nightsky of Las Vegas. One thing about the city, the night sky was never black, the excessive lighting of the Strip always painting a grey swarth over the city's skyline.

"Yes, that's fine," Jazz said in reply to Daniel, head tilted back to watch where he placed them. She lowered it to look at Melody. "I know you could have," Jazz told her, her voice clear and soft, not trying to disguise it as she guessed the vampire would be able to hear them no matter how quietly they spoke.

"Idle hands, and all, he can put them to good use," she said to her apprentice. "Plus you get to see what he's capable of." There was no indication whether Jazz thought this was a good or bad thing, her tone giving nothing away as to whether she approved or disapproved, so Melody took that as a good thing. If Jazz didn't trust him, or want him around, she would have made that abundantly clear.

She was again pulling things from the bag and handed Melody a jar carrying some sort of salt, instructing her to trail a line of it across each end of the alley between the carved stones. "If you need more there's another jar in the trunk."

Daniel sat on the edge of the roof. He figured if they wanted something else done up here, he could catch whatever was thrown. “What’s it for?” he asked. The vampire gestured at the jar of salt. Its purpose he could only guess, based on what he saw in movies. If their portrayal of vampires was anything to go on, witches were bound to be misrepresented.

Jazz paused and looked up at where Daniel was perched, his curiosity and question a little bemusing. 'Perhaps he really is as naive as he puts out,' the old witch thought to herself. "It helps anchor the shield," she replied in a normal speaking voice, "and is cheaper and less likely to get pinched than a whole lot of other crystals," she added as she walked down to stand in front of the opening.

She stared into it, allowing her mind to reach inside it, aware that at any second anything could appear in it, come through and require being dealt with in any number of fashions. "Why isn't it ever to another realm such as our own," she muttered under her breath. "Always has to be some realm of demonic nastiness or nutters. Just once it would be a nice change to have something come through that wasn't about to maim, dismember, gouge or destroy all in their reach." She let out a sigh and looked up the alley to where Melody was finishing the line of salt on the ground.

“Huh.” Daniel rubbed his jaw and looked out across the city, enjoying the slightly elevated perspective his perch allowed. His shoes swung idly. “Wonder if there’s a world that feels the same way about us. Some utopian place where there’s interspecies cooperation and everybody meditates all the time.”

Didn’t sound like the kind of place he’d like to go. Boring as shit. But from a human point of view, he could see the appeal.

He scooted to the side and jumped off the roof, coming to rest a meter or so from Jazz.

Jazz inclined her head, studying him for a brief moment as he straightened next to her.

"Only in the innocent dreams of those who haven't lived, I'm guessing," she replied, giving him a wry smile. "Can't say I'd fancy a world like that, but I wouldn't mind one time having a portal to somewhere just as inadequately equipped to deal with realms of the less co-operative, and as blind-sided by it all as we are." She huffed a small laugh. "Or as most of the world is."

She'd said for years that the ability of people to ignore the bloody obvious and put it down to 'one of those things' still staggered her. "Do you ever think of how it would be not having to hide what you are?" Her question was asked with sincerity, clearly having been something she had sought the answer to herself on more than a few occasions.

Daniel, hands in his pants pockets, raised his shoulders. “I think about it. Truthfully I don’t do a good job of hiding it anyway.”

Case in point, he was standing there with two women he barely knew and both of them realized he was a vampire. He had accidentally shown Holly, just cruising along in vamp face on accident.

“I think you could get away within anything in Vegas. Maybe L.A., too. New York…” he trailed off. In other words, places where people were accustomed to absurdity. Los Angeles for its Hollywood blasé lifestyle, and New York for the characters riding on its subway system. But on principle she was right. Those people didn’t really believe in vampires; they had just learned to tune out the world.